Margaret Furse (born Alice Margaret Watts, 18 February 1911 – 8 July 1974) was an English costume designer. She has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design six times, winning for Anne of the Thousand Days (1969).

Personal life

She was born to Punch magazine illustrator Arthur G. Watts and his wife, Phyllis Gordon Watts. She married art director Roger K. Furse on 4 December 1936 at Chelsea Old Church.

Career

She trained at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now the Central School of Art and Design) and then joined Motley Theatre Design Group. She became a costume designer in films, her first film was Laurence Olivier's Henry V as assistant designer to Roger Kemble Furse. She had her own costumier business called New Sheridan House. In 1970, she was awarded an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) and had five other nominations for The Mudlark (1951), Becket (1964), The Lion in Winter (1968), Scrooge (1970) and Mary, Queen of Scots (1971). She was also posthumously awarded an Emmy in 1975 for Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design for "Love Among the Ruins" (ABC Theatre, 6 March 1975) (her only nomination).

Later years

Roger and Margaret Furse divorced in 1953. She remarried and remained with her second husband, the Scottish author, film and drama critic Stephen G. Watts (no relation to her parents), until her death from breast cancer on 8 July 1974, in Kensington, London. A portrait is in the permanent collection of London's National Portrait Gallery. She was also painted by Gluck.

Awards and nominations